The indie net is right here to make the web bizarre once more

That is The Stepback, a weekly e-newsletter breaking down one important story from the tech world. For extra on web tradition, observe Stevie Bonifield. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Decide in for The Stepback right here.

The indie net started just a few years after the tip of GeoCities, which Yahoo shut down in 2009 (no less than, within the US — GeoCities Japan managed to hold on till 2019). GeoCities was a free website hosting service that launched in 1994 and as soon as hosted hundreds of thousands of non-public HTML web sites, from popular culture shrines to academics’ pages for his or her college students (and really all the pieces in between).

When GeoCities went darkish, these web sites disappeared with it, most of them misplaced for good. Some websites have been preserved by means of the GeoCities Gallery, however they’re frozen in time like relics in a museum. They’re nonetheless sorted into classes for the previous GeoCities “neighborhoods” they as soon as belonged to, like Area51 for sci-fi web sites or SiliconValley for tech web sites. These pages are actually plagued by damaged hyperlinks and lacking photos, however nonetheless supply an unfiltered look again on the colourful, chaotic net designs of the ’90s.

A lot of the web customers sufficiently old to recollect GeoCities moved on to social media and by no means regarded again. Not everybody, although. In 2013, developer and tech entrepreneur Kyle Drake, who additionally labored on the GeoCities Gallery, launched Neocities, a rebirth of GeoCities as a free website hosting service the place anybody can create an HTML web site, both by importing their very own or utilizing the browser-based HTML editor on Neocities.

Over a decade later, Neocities is on the heart of a facet of the web reviving a special period of the online, the place web sites didn’t must be good (and even completed) and communities have been fashioned by folks somewhat than algorithms. The pattern has actually picked up steam over the previous couple of years, pushing again towards algorithms and AI and calling for a extra inventive, private web, one its customers have dubbed the indie net.

Neocities is the guts of the indie net, however Nekoweb has additionally picked up a following over the previous 12 months because it launched in 2024. The 2 internet hosting platforms kind the principle hub of the motion.

Throughout each, you’ll see a wierd mixture of previous and new, like anti-AI webrings, a private web site within the type of the ’90s however themed round a Hobonichi Techo planner, or one web site that’s an interactive re-creation of Home windows 98. Even the demographics of the indie net are proof of this — the group appears to skew younger, largely below 30, so most of the folks making these pages in all probability missed out on the unique GeoCities (myself included).

Simply as previous and new collide on the indie net, so do creation and rejection. A lot of the motion’s reputation in the previous few years has been pushed by a need to flee AI, doom scrolling, and social media dependancy. The distaste for AI on the indie net is especially intense, a lot in order that Neocities customers created a petition to have an AI assistant referred to as “Penelope” faraway from Neocities after it was briefly noticed within the web site’s code editor. This incident is a part of why some customers left for Nekoweb, which advertises blocking AI crawlers and scrapers (though Neocities additionally guarantees to not promote your knowledge for coaching AI).

The indie net is about reclaiming house on the web for human-created content material. It’s not about creating the very best web site, probably the most optimized one, or the most well-liked one. It’s about creating no matter you need with out caring what an algorithm thinks of it or worrying about an AI ripping it off.

Consequently, design on the indie net is a stupendous headache. Unsurprisingly, many websites draw clear inspiration from ’90s net design, with a plethora of pixelated gifs, wacky backgrounds, and animated layouts which are at instances movement sickness-inducing (in one of the best ways). Some are even shrines to older eras of the web, like one in every of my private favorites, Frutiger Aero Archive, which is an ode to the design language of the early 2000s. On the entire, the indie net couldn’t be extra totally different from the chilly, environment friendly minimalism of contemporary net design.

One other core distinction between the indie net and social media is the emphasis on intentional group. Webrings have returned in full pressure, together with “net gardens,” sq. 250-by-250-pixel icons that includes successfully a “pattern” of your web site that others can embed on their websites, like a webring button. Many websites actually have a “neighbors” part, a callback to the “neighborhoods” GeoCities websites have been organized into.

Sure communities are flocking to the indie net greater than others, significantly artists and the LGBTQ+ group. AI and modifications moderately practices have made social media a extra hostile place for folks in these communities.

A wave of AI-generated content material has made it tougher for artists to get seen, and made posting their artwork on social media a riskier enterprise. In the meantime, not lengthy after Elon Musk purchased Twitter/X, the location eliminated a coverage banning customers from deliberately deadnaming transgender folks. All issues thought-about, it’s not stunning that these communities are among the many greatest and most prolific teams on the indie net (you’ll see loads of webrings for each throughout Neocities and Nekoweb websites).

What stood out to me most, and shocked me probably the most, was how the indie net feels. As I wandered by means of Nekoweb and Neocities, meandering down webring rabbit holes, I spotted I felt like I used to be exploring one thing I haven’t related to the web since elementary college.

Moderately than the chilly apathy I really feel whereas scrolling by means of Google or social media, I used to be genuinely curious what the subsequent web site would maintain, what bizarre design it might characteristic, what funky music or enjoyable details it might embrace. Some private web sites contained journal entries that left me feeling like I used to be truly attending to know the one who wrote them, a definite change from the snarky Twitter posts and tag-filled Instagram captions I’ve grown used to.

The indie net even manages to protect that previous sprinkle of worry that you simply’ll discover a web site that’s creepy or “harmful” someway, just like the off-putting web sites that littered the early web. Each time I landed on a web page that exclaimed, “Click on right here to enter!” I couldn’t assist second-guessing if I ought to or not.

However if you happen to select to not click on that “enter” button, there’s no panicked pop-up making an attempt to persuade you to remain on the location anyway. Pages on the indie net are carefree in a means the fashionable web isn’t. There’s no infinite scroll, no search engine marketing. Many websites don’t actually have a cell model. They only exist, asking nothing in return from guests (though you’re typically invited to signal a guestbook if you’d like). Many people in all probability don’t bear in mind the final time we felt just like the web was asking for nothing in return.

Relying on how social media modifications over the subsequent few years, I wouldn’t be shocked to see extra folks go away and provides the indie net a strive. Very like vinyl, it can in all probability by no means return to its peak like within the pre-Yahoo GeoCities days, however I believe there’ll proceed to be a constant group of people that flock to this facet of the web to flee the fashionable web.

A rise in age-gating, censorship, and AI-generated content material might additionally flip extra folks away from social media and towards the extra decentralized indie net. It manages to be each tougher to control and simpler to manage within the sense which you could determine to not embrace sure content material in your web site (like AI-generated photos) whereas on the identical time not having a tech firm telling you you’re not allowed to publish different varieties of content material.

Moreover, as AI more and more discourages folks from pursuing coding levels or studying to code, the indie net might maintain the lights on for a group of individuals nonetheless studying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You would simply have an AI code your HTML web site lately, however that clashes with the entire level of constructing a private web site to start with. If you wish to be on the indie net, you must code your piece of it your self, just like the awkwardly designed however lovingly made GeoCities websites of ages previous.